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Canadian customers of troubled telecommunications and Internet service provider WorldCom Inc. don’t have to unplug their networks, but they would do well to have a contingency plan, according to one telecom analyst.

Elroy Jopling, Toronto-based principal analyst with Gartner Dataquest, said most users will likely stay aboard for the moment. But he said organizations signing new contracts with WorldCom should be cautious.

“There’s a number of ways this could go, so quite frankly a lot more dominoes have to fall before we really know what is going to transpire. But when you lay off 20 per cent of your staff, will your quality of service decline? It will to some degree – that’s without question,” Jopling said.

WorldCom Inc. announced last month that it will restate its financial results for 2001 and the first quarter of 2002 as a result of accounting irregularities. It also terminated its chief financial officer (CFO), Scott Sullivan. At the time, WorldCom indicated it will continue with its previously announced plans to save US$900 million by reducing its workforce by 17,000.

At press time, Deborah Brown, a Toronto-based spokesperson for WorldCom Canada Ltd., said it was too early to say how this announcement would affect the company’s 300 Canadian employees.

“At this point we can’t make any comment. For us it’s business as usual,” Brown said.

WorldCom is accused of running afoul of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), essentially inflating a common measure of its earnings by nearly US$4 billion over the last five quarters.

In the Canadian telecom sector, Jopling said, “the only people that might win in an environment like this are Bell (Canada) and Telus (Corp.) because they are the largest, but I don’t think any of them want to see the market continually bombarded with bad news and bad news.”

And all customers, even those dealing with the apparently “rock solid” Bell or Telus have to become a little more short sighted in their plans, Jopling said. For example, buyers may decide to ink one-year contracts instead of five-year ones, he added.

“We had a bit of seemingly good news, with AT&T Corp. committing to acquire AT&T Canada, but this [WorldCom announcement] is definitely a negative sign. It’s just a case where, to put it mildly, you don’t want to see it happen to the industry.

Jeff Kagan, a telecommunication industry analyst based in Marietta, Ga., said that since the networks are already in place, WorldCom customers are likely to be untouched by this announcement.

More than a service issue, Kagan said this announcement “is an issue about trust (and) a big blow to the public perception.”

“Whether they go into bankruptcy or not, the network isn’t going to turn off,” said Jeff Phillips, director of consulting at market analysis firm TeleChoice Inc.

“I don’t think it’s going to have any impact in terms of service disruption,” he added.

What may be disrupted, however, is the rollout of new services and network expansion, he said.